Guide to PPC Management & Picking A PPC Agency

PPC management is a strategic initiative – not a series of growth hacks or bag of tricks. Profitable Google Ad campaigns mean using data to inform, optimize and grow over the long term.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to get started on your own PPC journey by providing some tools for success along with an insight into what it takes from both sides: The advertiser’s perspective as well as that which desires an optimized ROI out there looking at all those ads in order find its next customer!

Business owners, CMOs, CTOs, or any decision-makers in businesses typically end up being familiar with many if not all the major facets of their business. Pay-Per-Click marketing and digital marketing are topics that we assume most decision-makers are at least casually familiar with and understand the value of a well-run PPC campaign can bring to a business.

But when it comes to finding the right PPC agency to help manage a PPC campaign or PPC budget, it’s been our experience that many decision makers struggle with what questions they can ask to qualify a potential PPC agency partner. We’ve put together this guide with a few questions you should be asking a PPC agency, or conversely if you’re already working with an agency questions that your PPC agency should be able to answer relatively easily. While this list is by no means exhaustive, it’s been our experience that not all PPC agencies are equal, and just because a digital marketing agency CAN do PPC management doesn’t mean they’re the best PPC agency for you.

Before you approach a PPC agency it’s important to understand what your specific goals are in running pay-per-click campaigns.

Google’s Adwords platform and Microsofts’ Bing Advertising combined represent roughly 98% of searches, so the potential to reach new customers is certainly there, but simply plugging in keywords and a budget isn’t going to be an effective usage of your PPC marketing budget. Both Google Adwords and Bing have very robust toolsets within their respective platforms, that in the right hands can have tremendous impacts on a company’s growth, but mismanagement can lead to frustration, wasted spend, and worse than wasted budget-the opportunities missed.

Let’s say you’re an eCommerce company that sells beach umbrellas, having search-based ads versus having shopping ads can be the difference between clicks that cost you money versus clicks that generate sales. Typically shopping ads are better for consumer products because like the age-old saying goes ” a picture is worth a thousand words”, and it’s a no-brainer as to which is the better option.

Setting up the right type of campaign is an important screening question for hiring a PPC agency, and another initial qualifying question to ask before you approach an agency is getting a realistic idea of what your budget is.

Keyword research: conducting keyword research uncovers and identifies keywords that your target audience is searching for. This includes determining what they’re interested in, to begin with as well as targeting channels like Google Ads or Bing Ads depending on where you want them to go next;

Target channels selection: deciding between paid media such agencies can choose from display networks and social media advertising platforms such as Twitter ads for example so we know exactly how best to place our message within these spaces if it’s going off wide enough without putting too much time into just one platform alone when there might not be any response.

PPC Monitoring/Competition Analysis: When it comes to PPC, there’s an old adage that says “you get what you pay for.” As such we’re constantly measuring each campaign and keyword against our ROI. We also look at competition analysis in order to find gaps our competitors may be filling successfully which can help us take them down a notch with better strategies on how best to use their own weaknesses!

What do we mean by a realistic PPC budget? Rather than pulling a budget number out of your hat, we’re going to back into a budget projection based on conversions. Using this loose calculation, determine what a product sold, deal closed, or new customer acquisition is worth, and what your general close ratio is. That is to say how many qualified leads or customers do you typically need to get before you can convert one into a paid customer.

Whether you sell widgets or services let’s assume you convert 10% of all customers, and the widget or service is $1000. Again let’s assume the cost to generate a QUALIFIED lead is 5% of the value, so each lead should ideally cost $50. These numbers are approximations and your lead costs or close-ratio may be higher or lower depending on the value of the service, lifetime value of the customer, other factors, and we’ll cover those in a more detailed eCommerce marketing strategies post. Using this rough Cost Per Acquisition or CPA calculation, if you wanted your PPC agency to generate 10 sales a month, a reasonable budget would be $10,000. At these numbers a $10,000 per month PPC budget would be $40,000 per month ($50,000 in revenue-$10,000 PPC spend).

Armed with this information, you would approach a PPC agency, tell them about your business, and see what kind of budget they recommend! We cannot stress this point enough! Let the PPC agency you’re interviewing tell you what they think an accurate budget amount should be based on your products or services! Most of the fly-by-night just winging it PPC agencies are happy to take your budget, charge you a fixed percentage or monthly maintenance fee and call it a day. We’ve seen this over and over when we’re talking to potential PPC management clients who have worked with a shoddy PPC management agency in the past.

A potential PPC management client in the financial services industry told us “ Well I was spending $3000 a month with the agency, and none of the leads were converting” and “ the lead CPA never justified the spend”. When asked further that same person went on to tell us that a closed deal was worth between $80,000 and $100,000! Using that same rough CPA calculation for his business a reasonable lead cost would be $5000, and even though our CPA calculation is “back of the napkin” type math, you can quickly tell that the PPC campaign had a slim to none chance of generating a positive ROI for the client. Very often potential clients will relay that there was never much of a strategic conversation around budget or testing how a potential PPC agency thinks strategically.

While these questions are by no means a comprehensive guide to screening your next PPC agency, Rave Digital is an established Coral Springs PPC agency that simply does PPC management differently. How do you ask? Well firstly our PPC management style is very different from anything you’re accustomed to. Most of our customers are eCommerce digital marketing based, and our results aren’t ephemeral or hard to measure. Our eCommerce PPC clients can tell you to down to a penny the impact we have on their businesses.